Bonkers Blog September 2012

The
meeting started very promptly as it transpired that the Chair of this meeting councillor
Geraldene Lucia-Hennis had been double booked and she was
keen to get off to her other commitment of the evening at the Adults’ Services
Scrutiny Committee. Given the general scarcity of meetings in a normal week it
beggars belief that these sorts of clashes can ever occur. A quick check of the
September 2012 calendar of meetings
shows eleven free days out of the 20 available - what sort of incompetence is
required to double book a meeting? I guess we should remember that this is
Bexley council we are talking about so it should come as no real surprise.

The first item was the signing off of the 2011/12 accounts. Much more to come
about these at a later date. An initial skim reading has highlighted plenty of
material to demonstrate unequivocally the disingenuousness of many statements by
councillors and council officers. The moral here being that any fool can mislead
or misdirect but the truth will out - and you will look far worse when your
false words come back to haunt you.

A mere 185 pages to consider packed with tables, assumptions, estimations,
notes, explanations, audit recommendations and good governance points. How long
do you think our diligent councillors dedicated to this matter? Less than five
minutes was deemed appropriate and that included a presentation from a council
officer as well. They must all be accounting experts, or perhaps it was all too
much bother to drill into the detail and frankly it does not make great reading
for Bexley council. So, perhaps the less notice taken by those with
a vested interest in perpetuating the myth that all is well here in Bexley the
better. Without a murmur they were duly nodded through - councillor scrutiny of
the laxest kind.

The
revised appeal arrangements for employee relations brought up a rare spat
amongst the Conservatives. Councillor Nigel Betts was concerned about the costs
to the council here but his Conservative deputy leader indicated that this was a
dubious point. Councillor Colin Campbell – a caring, sharing Tory (Ha! Ha!) it
would appear – claimed he wanted fairness and was not at all bothered about
cost. And yes this is indeed the man who has Cabinet responsibility for Finance.
Some of the accounts detail to come will show his laissez-faire
approach to money management in more detail. I, on the other hand, was more inclined to
believe his other point about bringing the procedure into line with other London
councils as being probably the prime motivation here.

It turned out that this matter would probably affect less than one case per year
so the fact that this item took up more than twice the minor issue of accounts
encompassing over £350 million worth of assets and around £450 million of cash
speaks volumes to this casual observer. The Conservative spat intensified as
councillor Betts pointed out that councillor Campbell’s claim that none of these
appeals were overturned by Members was incorrect as he himself had served on a
committee that had done precisely that. At this point the Conservative
Chair clearly felt that such a public show of disunity could not be allowed to
continue and she wrapped the matter up by supporting her superior. I am sure she
will be rewarded accordingly unlike the troublemaker Betts.

The final agenda item was a brief review of the council’s staff absence management
procedures. They are aiming for six days of sickness or fewer per employee per
year. The table supplied indicated that this target has been consistently missed
every year since 2009 so what was being done to address this shortcoming?
Unfortunately this question was not posed so I cannot give you the answer. This
review was all about minor tweaks to the existing procedures – that we know do
not seem to work at all. Supposedly it will streamline the HR processes. How
this deals with the absence itself was not made clear and reminded me of the
idea encapsulated by Nero fiddling while Rome burned. Ten minutes or so thus
wasted on this topic.

The meeting was duly concluded at 19:55 with the chair swiftly going upstairs.
Given the token nature of the whole meeting perhaps she need not have bothered
with it at all.